


Plucked from the Earth

by NeriEsle



Series: Plucked from the Earth [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5068387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeriEsle/pseuds/NeriEsle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To the rest of the world, John Watson's death looked like a tragic accident. To Sherlock, it was part of Moriarty's game. It HAD to be part of Moriarty's game. Because if John Watson... bravest, kindest, wisest, best... was truly dead, and by something so ordinary and boring as a gas explosion, Sherlock might lose his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Taking this for a test drive..
> 
> Warnings, ratings, and characters will be added/updated as each chapter is posted.

* * *

 The first thing Sally Donovan would remember was that it had started off a beautiful day.

That should have been her first clue. The worst tragedies always happened on the most beautiful days.

This day in particular had started off almost magical. Sally had risen before dawn, as usual. Instead of going to the office, she went to the gym, reveling in the fact that there was no pile of paperwork waiting for her, no open case that required endless cups of coffee, no overworked DI’s demanding updates, and no Consulting Freaks sniffing chair legs and deducing coworkers’ bedroom practices.

The treadmill was Sally’s favorite, and she had a new playlist especially for a morning like this. All the songs were upbeat and optimistic, because Sally was trying to be upbeat and optimistic. Greg had ordered her to be upbeat and optimistic. It had been three weeks into the New Year, and there was no sign of Moriarty since the hack of all of London’s television stations. That obnoxious, annoying face and chipmunk voice had followed Sally around for days, following her to sleep, interrupting cases, shadowing all phone and television screens she saw.

The recording had lasted fifteen minutes, then programming went back to normal. The feds had been called, scary government officials had flooded their offices, but for all they could see, it was some anonymous hacker fucking with all of them, reminding the police of their vulnerability and futility.

It was looking less and less likely that Moriarty survived a bullet in his brain, and yesterday, the last of the secret service-type blokes had left Scotland Yard. Greg was relieved. He’d told Sally to appreciate every day that seemed calm and peaceful, and not to come in until after seven the next day.

Sally couldn’t sleep, still uneasy and not convinced the threat of Moriarty, or whoever was behind Moriarty’s recording was put to rest. But a feeling was a feeling, and Sally had no proof that anything was wrong, so she told herself to suck it up and do what Greg said. Relax. Slow down for a day. But her internal clock wouldn’t let her sleep, so the gym was the next best way to unwind.

The morning sky was a beautiful cloudless navy, and she could actually see a small smattering of stars despite the light pollution of the city… a rare treat. The bare tree branches that lined the sidewalk in front of her flat were frosted in a layer of silver ice, like the stars had descended from the sky. The air was crisp and sharp, and absolutely refreshing.

Sally made it to the gym and even had time to stop for a hot chocolate and a croissant.

By the time she made it into the office, the sun had risen and the ice was melting off the tree branches and light posts. The temperature had risen above freezing, and the promise of an early spring was the cherry on top of a perfect morning.

Of course, it all went to hell before ten o’clock.

The call came in of a massive explosion near Harrow, in a neighborhood Sally knew was mostly middle-class families and well-tended front gardens. Explosions were unheard of. Terrorism was the immediate thought, although Sally thought gas explosions, or even meth lab explosions were more likely than terrorists in this neighborhood.

Except something about this little neighborhood nagged at Sally’s mind as she drove her car, siren screaming, through the streets of London. Had there been a crime scene there recently? No, maybe it was a witness who lived there? Sally didn’t think so. She didn’t recall riding through these streets, past these lovely houses with their tricycles and footballs lying about the front gardens. But the street name, even the address, hit something in the back of Sally’s mind, and she pressed her foot on the gas, her heart beating just a bit faster, more apprehensive than usual at what she’d find at the scene.

Chaos is what she found. By the time Sally pulled up to the scene, the whole block had been cordoned off. The fire brigade was there, spraying what seemed like Niagra Falls onto a massive inferno where a house used to stand. Flames billowed out of the leftover crater, as if hell itself was reaching up to claim its prize. The flames were so monstrous and dense it eliminated even the possibility of survival for anyone who had been inside. The homes on either side of it had been damaged beyond repair, the sides and walls blown off so the sitting rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms were exposed for the entire street to see. Flames had spread to these houses, and firefighters were struggling to contain the blaze.

Glass littered the street. It seemed every building on the block had their windows blown out. Car alarms were screaming all down the street, windowless and gaping. Every resident was outside, pushed back across the street, standing in each other’s front gardens and kneeling on car hoods, gaping and shocked at the hellish picture in front of them.

There may not have been any casualties, Sally thought in what she realized was too much optimism. She jogged down the block from her car toward the nearest officer, trying to convince herself that it was late morning, and most children would be in school, most people on this block would work nine to five jobs, perhaps the house had been empty, and those on either side of it had as well.

When she was two houses away from the blaze, the heat hit her in the face like she’d stuck her head in front of an open oven.  The air in front of her wavered in the heat haze. It was impossible to even get on the sidewalk in front of the burning house.

“What the bloody hell happened?” she demanded to the closest officer… a young man with a red face, wide eyes, and a haircut that said he was clearly just out of training and probably still living with his mum.

“Whole house exploded!” He exclaimed uselessly.

“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered, her oath drowned out by the screaming rescue sirens and wailing car alarms all along the street. “Where’s your boss?”

The young officer pointed down the street, past the burning house and the enormous fire truck. She found the officer’s boss, a man she knew as Sergeant Cooper, who shook his head as she reached him.

“Cabbie saw the whole thing,” he said, jerking his head back to where Sally saw a man sitting in the back of an ambulance, visibly shaking with shock, draped in an orange blanket and supporting a gash across his forehead and a bloody nose that looked like it might be broken. “Said he dropped a passenger off at the house and not ten seconds after he went inside, the house exploded. Said it shattered the glass in his cab and actually lifted it off the ground a bit. Poor guy got his nose broken trying to restrain the other passenger. We had to cuff the passenger. He tried to run into the fire.”

“ _What_?”

Cooper nodded solemnly, then narrowed his eyes. “Actually, I think you might know the guy. I’ve seen his face in the papers. That detective who works for the police. Wasn’t sure if it was your division… ahh, I’m guessing it was, then.”

The blood had drained from Sally’s face, and her lips parted automatically. “Sh… Sherlock Holmes? Did you mean Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yes, yes, that’s his name! Sherlock Holmes. We had to restrain him.” Cooper nodded his head to a police car Sally had walked right by without glancing at. She looked behind him and saw someone in the backseat, sitting still, with a mop of familiarly mussed hair. “Gave the cabbie a broken nose when the cabbie tried to restrain him from running into the house after his mate. Don’t know who I should feel more sorry for.”

“Oh Jesus, no. Oh God… Cooper, whose house was that? Who lives… lived there?” It couldn’t be, but Sally knew the answer in her bones. She had to hear it, though. Someone else had to say the words… someone who wouldn’t know what a sick joke that would be, wouldn’t know what catastrophic consequences were about to befall London with this pronouncement.

But Cooper continued on like the lucky, ignorant bastard he was. “Neighbors say a John and Mary Watson lived there. Cabbie said his passenger was called ‘John’ by Holmes. ” He looked back at Sally, his face grim. “The neighbors say Mary Watson is pregnant. We’re trying to figure out her location now. Apparently she works at the same clinic as Mr. Watson.”

“It’s Dr. Watson,” Sally corrected, her lips numb.

Doctor John Watson, her pain medication for the migraine that was the Freak, had been blown up. And by the sound of it, not by the Freak.

Oh dear God, Sherlock Holmes without John Watson. Clearly the thought was as scary to Sherlock as it was to Sally, if his actions were anything to judge by. This was his second time running into a fire for the short doctor. Sally remembered just over a year ago, the most disturbing Guy Fawkes Night call she’d received in many years. John groggy and stunned on the ground, his girlfriend cradling him and muttering soothing words, Sherlock mute and white and hovering over them, his gloves charred and smoking.

Sally broke away from Cooper and went to the police car where Sherlock was handcuffed in the back seat. He was sideways, facing the fire, the light bathing his grey face in orange. The left side of his face was swollen and red and burned rather badly. His eyebrows had been singed off, and he wasn’t wearing his obnoxious overcoat or posh scarf. In fact, his shirt was burned, with black spots and patches across his left shoulder and down his arm.

“Jesus fucking…” Sally muttered, and immediately wrenched the door open. “Sherlock,” she said, his name sounding odd rolling off her tongue. “You need to go to hospital, you’ve got second degree burns.”

Sherlock didn’t respond. His eyes were glazed, glowing orange as he stared at the fiery crater that had once been the Watsons’ home. He flinched slightly as Sally grabbed his right arm and helped him out of the car. Sherlock stood up, and his right leg buckled, and he was on the ground, making no attempt at trying to stand. A second later, he vomited all over Sally’s shoes.

“Fuck,” Sally breathed. She knelt down, clenching her teeth against the sour smell of sick. She quickly uncuffed the Freak, and put her hand on his head, lifting his face so she could see him better.

Shock. Clear and obvious and dangerous. His face, left shoulder and arm were burned, and she felt a lump on his head and uneven pupils that meant a concussion.

“Medic!” She shouted over her shoulder. “I need a medic! Sherlock,” she turned back to him. “Was John inside? Did you see him go inside?”

Sherlock’s face went even whiter. Internal hemorrhaging floated through Sally’s mind.

“He… he walked…” Sherlock muttered, and Sally leaned in closer so should could catch every word, “walked right through the… right through the front door, and it would take him approximately six point seven seconds to take off his coat and hang in the front hall, then two seconds to straighten his jumper, and it takes eight steps to get from the front hall to the kitchen, which is five point four seconds because he has short legs, but the explosion happened exactly ten seconds after he walked in the front door which means he was in the middle of the front hall when it exploded and…” Sherlock inhaled a breath on a gasp, “as you can see, the front hall is no longer there, so the questions remains; where is John?”


	2. I knew him. He was nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoookay, here we go. This is officially an AU as of TAB, (as anticipated) but I intend to keep going with my original plot. I don't have a set schedule for posting. This is going to be a long story, and I want to get it right and do it justice. I'm excited about what's coming up!
> 
> I'm trying to write a novel in real life, so this is what I do when I procrastinate. I'm a professional procrastinator.

* * *

 

Molly Hooper was smarter than most people realized. One didn’t become a pathologist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital with less than above-average intelligence.

People were deceived by the pink and cats and soft, stuttering voice. Passing her on the street, she was just a shy, awkward, girl covered layers of jumpers sprinkled with a fine coating of cat hair. Even those she worked with forgot to take her seriously at times, what with her small obsession with Glee and Grey’s Anatomy, her tendency to talk too much about her cat, and her unending supply of fluffy scarves and mittens.

Molly _had_ to be overly-cheerful and surround herself with fluffy, colorful, cheerful, sickeningly-sweet things. Molly worked with dead bodies. Sometimes even bodies of people she knew. People she liked.

Molly had liked John Watson very much.

And right now, all that was left of him was a pile of ashes and bone fragments spread out on the autopsy table in front of her.

Molly had taken one look at the remains presented to her, then calmly turned around, walked to the bathroom, and threw up the contents of her lunch. Vomiting always made her eyes water, and they didn’t stop. She sobbed in the bathroom, a dripping wet mess, for twenty minutes. Then she left the bathroom stall, rinsed her mouth with water while splashing some on her face, and forced herself to dissociate.

Molly then spent the next several hours X-raying the pile of remains, combing through them meticulously, pulling out anything that had appeared in the X-ray as foreign matter. She carefully collected these tiny fragments, labeled them, and set them aside for testing. She wrote herself a note to have Greg contact John’s sister, Harriet Watson, for a DNA sample. Otherwise, it was very difficult to state conclusively that the charred bones before her were John Watson’s.

When she’d finished examining him, she realized her knees were shaking, and she pulled off her gloves and mask and walked out of the room to take a few deep breaths of air that wasn’t full of death. It wasn’t often Molly was overwhelmed by the magnitude of what her job entailed, but her mind was on a continuous loop over and over, fixated on one simple fact.

 _I knitted baby booties for that child on the table in there_.

Mary’s autopsy was worse than John’s, if Molly was honest with herself. John seemed to have been caught at the epicenter of the blast, so there wasn’t much left of him once the fire had added its damage on top of the explosion.

Mary, well… there was more of her. Not much, admittedly, but enough that she was more recognizable as a person, rather than debris, although what remained were just as charred and blackened as her husband’s few parts. But there was more for Molly to analyze, including the badly-damaged yet unmistakeable remains of a fully-formed, ready-to-come-out fetus.

Yes, Mary’s autopsy would take a while. So there was plenty of time for Molly to remember in vivid detail the last time she’d seen the woman alive, two weeks before, cheerful and friendly and _living_.

At least Molly’s last memory of Mary was a good one.

Molly had been elbow-deep in the abdomen of a corpse when Mary showed up, face flushed from cold, round as a ball.

“Mary! Hi!” Molly had chirped, looking up through her goggles that Sherlock had informed her, on multiple occasions, made her look like a fly.

After he returned from two years abroad, he amended his comparison to dragonfly.

“Are you looking for Sherlock? Or, er, sorry of course not, you’re probably looking for John,” Molly shook her head. “Sorry, they’re not here. I haven’t seen them.”

“It’s late. I’m surprised you’re still here,” Mary said, and to Molly’s astonishment, pulled up a stool and sat right beside her, in full view of the dissected corpse and all its innards.

“Well, Mr. Gimbon here has a date tomorrow at the funeral home, so I’m making him look his best!” Molly joked. “I only do makeup and hair, not wardrobe!”

 _Shut it, Molly_! She berated herself, shaking her head as she felt her face redden. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Mary smiling in amusement.

“Lucky man,” Mary remarked. “Look at those unruly eyebrows. He should have come to you much sooner.”

Molly grinned. “Oh, he’s not the worst. One time I had a body that was almost _forty_ stone! The family insisted it wasn’t natural causes, so I had to dig around to make sure. Took me three days.” She shook her head, shuddering at the memory.

“And was it natural causes?” Mary asked, eyes wide in interest.

“Nope!” Molly shook her head, still proud that one. “One of his girlfriends was rubbing toxins into his sores when she bathed him. He couldn’t tell because he could barely feel it over his own weight. Would have looked like natural causes, if traces of Dolls Eyes weren’t in his bloodstream. White baneberry?” Molly offered when Mary’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “A plant with toxic white berries.”

“I know what Dolls Eyes is,” Mary shook her head, seeming bemused. “What I don’t believe is the ‘girlfriends’ part. As in more than one?”

“Two. Well, he was five hundred fifty pounds, I’m sure there was more than enough of him to go around.”

“He might have been with them at the same time, one on either side, and they would never know.”

It felt odd to hear the morgue echoing with laughter, but Molly was delighted to hear her own rude thoughts voiced by someone else.

“But why go through the effort to kill him?” Mary thought, wiping her eyes as their mirth died down. “He probably wasn’t long for this world anyway.”

“Well, the killer girlfriend realized she wasn’t his only lover,” Molly confided. “So I think she tried to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Kill the man, frame his other girlfriend. But that didn’t work, because the second girlfriend had seven cats and would never have bought Dolls Eyes.”

“Ah, did Sherlock figure that one out?”

“Nope!” Molly said proudly, lifting her head a bit. “I figured it out myself! Learned the hard way, I’m afraid.”

“Aw, that’s rubbish luck.”

“Yeah,” Molly sighed. “Poor Mifty.”

“It’s always the sweet ones, isn’t it?”

Molly nodded sadly. “You’ve had cats?”

“Not anymore. I can’t say John’s particularly fond of them. But I had them as a child. Lots of strays around my home growing up.”

“Lucky,” Molly said.

“At one point, we had twelve roaming the property.”

“Goodness!” That had been Molly’s dream as a child. She hadn’t been allowed cats until she was thirteen, and then, only one at a time. From the nostalgic, slightly sad look on Mary’s face, it must have been heaven. Perfect timing, then. “Actually, Mary, would you get my bag for me?”

“Your bag?” Mary asked, then went to the back corner when Molly gestured with her head.

“Yeah, reach inside. Under my phone charger. You can pull those out.”

Molly stopped what she was doing to focus completely on Mary’s expression as she pulled a tiny yellow knit hat from the bag. “There’s more, look!” Molly couldn’t help but add, and Mary reached in and pulled out two more tiny yellow balls of yarn.

For a long few moments, Mary stared at the objects in her hands with a blank expression. Molly felt her smile falter.

“It’s… it’s a baby beanie and booties,” Molly offered, pulling her hands from the corpse finally. “For the baby. It’s… I wasn’t sure if it was a boy or girl, so I went with yellow, and if you don’t like the kitty ears I think I can take those off, you can just leave that on my bag, or if the material is too rough or maybe too small, but I wasn’t sure… Do you not like yellow?” Molly finally had to draw breath as her babbling nearly suffocated her.

Mary was still staring down at the tiny pieces of clothing in her palms with no expression on her face. She hadn’t looked up at Molly.

Maybe gender neutral colors had been a bad idea.

“They’re lovely, Molly,” Mary finally spoke. “Truly, they are.” She finally met Molly’s gaze, and Molly was struck by how affected Mary seemed. She looked ready to cry.

Pregnancy hormones must be terrible.

“It was nothing, really. I love knitting, and I thought the idea of kitty ears would be nice, so…”

“They’re perfect,” Mary agreed, holding the hat up. “Thank you, Molly. You’re a good friend.”

Molly blushed with pleasure. “It was nothing. Really. I just… well, I wanted the baby to have something from me. Silly as that sounds.”

“Why silly?” Mary asked, absently stroking the booties as she stared at Molly with an almost Sherlock-like focus.

“Well,” Molly’s blush deepened. “I mean, I care about John too, you know? And you, of course, obviously. But well… I mean, you were at the wedding. Of course you were, just… well, with Sherlock around, I’m assuming he’ll probably be godfather, right?”

“It’s a safe bet,” Mary said, an affectionate smile slowly forming as Molly stammered like a fool.

“Well, Sherlock… he’ll… and I wouldn’t have said or believed this a few years ago, but he’ll be absolutely doting on your baby. I know it. John’s changed him that way, you see. You didn’t know Sherlock a few years ago. He was… well, rude, he’s always been rude. But sometimes you really thought he didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t. He was so cold and focused and blunt. And now, he’s simply overflowing with love and affection, and it’s funny how he doesn’t seem to realize it, or tries to pretend to be cold like he used to. But he’s not. John changed him, Mary. Everyone can see it. He’s kinder now. Easier to reach. I can’t even begin to imagine how he’ll be around your baby, but I think you’ll have to place some boundaries, because he’s bound to spoil it. And he’ll definitely try to take it to crime scenes,” Molly added as an afterthought. “You’ll have to look out for that.”

Mary was watching Molly intently, as if seeing something she’d never noticed before.

“Anyway,” Molly felt  her face heat again as she turned to the neglected corpse on the table. “You’ll probably have to screen his Christmas gifts for the baby. He’ll probably try to give it a dead bird, or something - ”

“You are a good friend, Molly,” Mary said again, smiling full-on at her. She no longer looked ready to cry, but her face still seemed sad, like it was a sorrowful thing that Molly was a good friend.

“If you need anything at all, any help when the baby comes,” Molly offered, “you can call me anytime!”

That had been two weeks ago. Molly hadn’t seen Mary since, although she’d seen John a few times when he and Sherlock burst unannounced into the morgue to examine a corpse or two. Sherlock was always brusque, demanding body parts and analysis, yet not biting like he’d been before. John, of course, was as kind and generous as ever, asking Molly about her day and her cat while Sherlock ransacked the lab.

Molly’s musings were interrupted by the harsh buzz of her phone against the silence of death in the morgue.

It was Greg. Swallowing hard, Molly picked up the phone.

Before she could utter a word, Greg’s frantic voice cut her off. “Molly, listen, Sherlock’s on his way there. He’s supposed to be in hospital but he escaped when we took eyes off him for _one second_. Do not let him in, Molly, we tried to sedate him but he deduced the nurse so badly she left crying and he escaped before we could get another nurse. He might be there now - ”

“Oh God,” Molly breathed, looking up from her work at the doors to the morgue. “He’s not here yet, Greg, but I don’t know if I can keep him from coming in… I can lock the doors, but he picks locks too easily…”

“We’ve called building security to be on the lookout, but I wanted to make sure you know. Where are you?” Greg sounded out-of-breath, like he was running.

“Examining them,” Molly’s voice broke as she stared down at the blackened remains of a jacket button. “He can’t see this, Greg… this would…”

Break him? Kill him? Molly couldn’t say. Nothing would be an exaggeration.

“Please hurry,” was all Molly could say.

“We’ll be there in ten minutes. Keep your ears open, Molly.”

Molly hung up, her hands shaking, her heart pounding. Sherlock, on his way here, to… what? See John’s remains? Examine them? Steal them?

“Please hurry,” she whispered again.

It took longer than Molly expected. Sherlock arrived in four minutes, not two. She heard his voice like she hadn’t in years, biting and sharp and cruel, echoing in the hall outside, too loud to ignore.

Removing her goggles and gloves, and taking a deep, unsteady breath, Molly opened the doors, stepped out into the hall, and locked them behind her. She kept the key in her hand, too experienced in Sherlock’s habit of pickpocketing.

“... disappointed in your career choice which is why she’s left you out of her will, she thinks you’ll just squander her inheritance and never give her children, which, judging from your vast middle and early-onset baldness, seems like a likely scenario - ”

“Sherlock!” Molly raised her voice so it cut over his scathing deductions. “You shouldn’t be here… oh God!”

It was worse than she’d expected.

Sherlock looked half-mad, and not just from the crazed glint in his eyes. The left half of his face was badly burnt, the skin swollen and red, and his eyebrows had been singed off, as had some of his hair. He was wearing nursing scrubs that he must have nicked, and the short sleeves revealed cuts and burns on his left arm, shoulder, and neck.

He was barefoot.

Sherlock’s eyes focused on Molly, and she felt their steel gaze like a physical push. “You will let me in to examine the bodies.”

“I can’t, Sherlock, you know I can’t,” she shook her head. “Family can’t go in, you know that.”

“I’m not family, I’m a detective investigating a crime, and I must examine the bodies.”

“No, Sherlock.” Molly’s eyes prickled. “You can’t, I’m sorry. I haven’t finished the exam yet. You can see them once I’m done.”

Sherlock ignored her and started walking forward. One of the guards put a hand on Sherlock’s injured shoulder. Sherlock hissed and brought his right fist around and bashed it into the guard’s head.

Molly gasped as the guard went down and Sherlock tried to leap forward, but another security guard grabbed his right fist, and another guard appeared and gripped Sherlock’s burned elbow, and Sherlock was shouting and the guards were calling for backup, and Molly was yelling “You’re hurting him! Sherlock, please!”

“Enough!”

A voice as smooth as a sharpened blade cut through the hall, and Molly had never been so relieved to see Mycroft Holmes in her life.

“I will examine the bodies,” Mycroft stated firmly as he walked to Molly’s side. “She’s right, Sherlock. It would be quite inappropriate for you to examine them, especially in your current state.”

“Current state?” Sherlock scoffed from where he was being restrained by three guards. “Don’t be stupid, Mycroft, I deduced my way into Scotland Yard while on a three-month cocaine bender. You’re just trying to take control of everything, as usual.”

“Sentiment can cloud judgement more than drugs.”

“ _Senti_ … how would you know, anyway?” Sherlock spat. “You don’t know J… the Watsons as well as I do, you’ll miss something!”

“I don’t _miss_ ,” Mycroft gazed down his nose at Sherlock. “And I think everyone here can agree you’re not at your best investigative mode at the moment. You reek of antiseptic.”

“Fuck _off_ , Mycroft!”

“No, Sherlock, you’re not to go in there.” Molly let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding as Greg showed up. “It’s protocol, and if you resist, I shall have to arrest you.”

“ _Arrest me_?” Sherlock snarled, rounding on Greg then groaning in pain. “I’d like to see you try, Lestrade. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in need of hospital, so you can try to take me to jail, but I’ll catch something and then Mycroft will sue you and have your badge, and then who will solve your precious crimes and keep your idiotic police in order - ”

“You’re not going in there, Sherlock,” Mycroft stated in such a final way that even Sherlock went silent for a moment. But then he opened his mouth to argue, and Mycroft cut over him, “You’re not going in, but I am, and I will relay every single detail to you once I’ve made my examination. It’ll be like a game, Sherlock, like when we were children. I’ll make the examination, and you can solve the crime based on my memories, alone.”

Molly glanced up at the elder Holmes, hiding the surprise she felt at his change of tone; it was the tone of someone coaxing a reluctant, frightened child to take that first terrifying step.

And to her even greater surprise, Sherlock glared up at Mycroft for a few tense moments, then slowly nodded his head, his jaw clenched.

“Now then, Dr. Hooper,” Mycroft said, turning and strolling down the hall to the morgue. “Let’s see what you have for us today.”

Molly spared a last worried look at where Sherlock watched them retreat like a lion watching its prey move away. Greg moved up to stand beside Sherlock, putting a comforting hand on his uninjured shoulder.

Closing the mortuary doors behind them, Molly turned to see Mycroft’s composed, controlled exterior shatter, and with a long exhale, he braced his hands on the examining table and hung his head in a picture of such defeat, Molly’s mouth went dry.

“Oh, this is catastrophic,” he breathed. Molly suspected he wasn’t talking to her. “This was not… this was not how…” Mycroft looked up, and Molly couldn’t breathe because the expression Mycroft wore was one she’d seen before on Sherlock years ago, hiding in her flat and listening to Mycroft explain just how close Moriarty’s assassins had come to ending John Watson.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to him,” Mycroft admitted.

“To Sherlock?”

Mycroft gave a small nod. “He doesn’t let people close to him, and he does not handle loss well. And this…” he shook his head. “I have no idea how this will play out.”

Molly twisted her fingers, certain that no one had seen such vulnerability from the elder Holmes in years… maybe ever. She anxiously watched Mycroft try to pull himself together. He stood up straight, tugging his suit into place, his features smoothing back into their casual arrogance. “My brother holds you in high regard,” he announced, now looking down at the table before him, which held Mary Watson’s remains. He slowly circled it, his eyes taking in every single atom. “As do I, for your roll in Sherlock’s mission in the Moriarty business, and for your discretion.” Mycroft bent lower, carefully analyzing the body, yet not touching, moving, or writing anything down. “For that, you have our eternal gratitude.” He circled the body a few more times, leaning down, sniffing (Molly winced), standing, observing, and finally giving a small nod. Then he went over to John’s table, where there was even less to investigate.

“More importantly,” Mycroft said, and he stopped and stood above John’s remains, and his gaze held no analysis, just grief, “you are now one of the very few remaining individuals who Sherlock… _cares_ about. He trusts you. I would ask, Miss Hooper,” his eyes flickered up to her, holding her in place, “that you do well to take special care. I believe his sanity will be tested in the coming hours and weeks. Who knows how long this _grief_ will last.” Mycroft circled the body one last time, and his whole being seemed to deflate.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“I still need to send away for DNA,” Molly replied softly.

“Of course,” Mycroft said absently, looking at the doors. He straightened his shoulders. “I believe, Miss Hooper, this will be the most difficult message I’ve ever had to relay. And I’ve dealt with _North Korean diplomats_.”

Looking like he was walking to his death, Mycroft left the morgue.

Heart pounding so hard it was deafening in her ears, Molly stood at the door, looking out the windows into the hallway, where Sherlock stood with Greg gripping his arm, for support and probably restraint, and the three security guards around them on alert, but not touching them. She watched Mycroft stop in front of Sherlock and Greg, and talk. She couldn’t hear what he said. But she knew the exact moment he confirmed it was John Watson and Mary Watson on the tables because Greg’s moan and curse was audible to her as he put a hand over his face.

Sherlock didn’t react.

Mycroft spoke for a few more seconds, and Sherlock responded. He seemed unaffected, professional, aloof. Beside him, Greg pressed his thumb and middle finger to his eyes, his head bowed. His shoulders shook.

Molly turned away, going back to the bodies of the Watson family. She’d need to find some biological relative of Mary’s… some distant aunt or uncle or cousin. She remembered something about Mary being an orphan, which would make DNA confirmation difficult, especially since all of Mary’s possessions and been destroyed in the fire -

A shout, a loud commotion, and Sherlock burst through the doors into the morgue.

“No, get out!” Molly shouted, running up to him, but he strode right past her, straight to the table that held the charred ashes of John Watson.

Sherlock’s eyes were wild and wide, his lips pressed too tight together, and his breathing through his nose was heavy and fast. He stared for about three seconds as Mycroft and Greg stood frozen in the doorway, tensed like waiting for the right moment to trap a wild tiger.

“Molly get me my magnifying glass,” Sherlock ordered quietly, eyes fixed on John’s bones.

“You’re… it’s not here, Sherlock.”

“Get me _a_ magnifying glass.”

“Sherlock, you don’t have permission to examine - ”

“You see here, under his armpits, are fabric remains and if you test them, Molly, I’m sure you’ll find the fabric of John’s jacket, which he wore that morning when we finished giving statements at Scotland Yard, and which he usually hangs up in the foyer, so he’d have to turn left, and it would take approximately six point seven seconds to take off his jacket, but the explosion happened ten seconds after he stepped inside the house, so it makes no sense that this corpse would have a jacket still on when John would have taken his off, as he always does because he’s a man of habit and,” Sherlock turned away from the table and looked at Molly. His face was grey and shone with sweat, and his colorless lips trembled. “Molly where’s the maginffff…”

Sherlock’s eyes rolled back in his head, and Greg bounded forward, catching Sherlock under his arms before he banged his head on the table on his way to the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> And here we go...


End file.
